Gouda was great, a mostly true story

Gouda Was Great
By Laura McHale Holland

I'd had it before, probably at some buffet along the way, but I didn't come to know gouda until I was part of a ragtag group heading south toward the Mediterranean in a VW van.

A guy from Canada had a whole wheel of gouda he'd carried in his pack all the way from Amsterdam. And it was gouda that bonded us, him slicing pieces with a Swiss army knife and passing them around as we bumped along.

We ate gouda on a hillside by the road, around campfire flames, and on the ferry to Morocco, where everything smouldered at the edges. Yet the days wore on and the waves rolled in and the drums droned at sunset, and we brushed our teeth in the saltwater waves, and the gouda was great, feeding us again and again until the guy from Canada caught a ride to Tangiers with a girl on a motorcycle. He took his gouda with him, leaving not even his name behind. 

Photo by tuppus.